The former, who took up the hobby after leaving office, unveiled new paintings of world leaders on the Today Show on Friday.

That was the chal­lenge theformer pres­id­ent George W. Bush presen­ted his paint­ing in­struct­or, Bush told NBC’s TodayShow Fri­day morn­ing while un­veil­ing a col­lec­tion of his art­work, on dis­play at his pres­id­en­tial lib­rary in Dal­las. He wanted that in­ner paint­er to come out.

While the paint­ings don’t have the dra­mat­ic con­trasts and photo real­ism of, let’s say, “The Night­watch,” their pleas­ant pas­tels do, ac­cur­ately, de­pict their sub­jects: world lead­ers.

Bush has be­come one of the more in­ter­est­ing former pres­id­ents. Jimmy Carter builds houses. Bill Clin­ton fo­cuses on the de­vel­op­ing world. But George W. Bush paints. And every­one around him is sur­prised. “Who would’ve thought it?” the former pres­id­ent said dur­ing the in­ter­view, con­duc­ted by his daugh­ter, and NBC spe­cial cor­res­pond­ent, Jenna Bush Hager. We “nev­er knew,” his moth­er, former first lady Bar­bara Bush told the Today hosts, in re­ac­tion.

World lead­ers don’t know how to re­act to the hobby either. Star­ing at a paint­ing of Tony Blair, Bush told his daugh­ter, “I think I told him I was paint­ing him and brushed it off, so to speak.”

An art pun! This guy gets it.

The most note­worthy paint­ing of the morn­ing was one of Rus­si­an Pres­id­ent Vladi­mir Putin, not be­cause of its pass­able like­ness, but be­cause of the ana­lys­is from the artist.

“As you know, our dear dog Barney had a spe­cial spot in my heart,” the former pres­id­ent said. “I in­tro­duced him to Putin; Putin kind of dissed him. ‘You call that a dog?’ A year later, your mom and I go to vis­it, and he’d say, ‘You like to meet my dog?’ Out bounds this huge hound. And Putin says ‘big­ger, stronger and faster than Barney.’ “

His daugh­ter pressed for more. “And you kind of thought, ‘Is this sym­bol­ic?’”

“I took it in. I didn’t re­act,” Bush said. “Wow, any­body who thinks ‘My dog is big­ger than your dog’ is an in­ter­est­ing char­ac­ter. And that paint­ing kind of re­flects that.”